Startups

Woven App Keeps All Your Photos in One Place

With each new tablet, smartphone and laptop — not to mention applications— comes a host of new storage opportunities. From Facebook to Picasa to a home computer, digital photos can be stored almost anywhere.

Woven, launched last year by Boston-based startup Litl, is for those of us who want to consolidate photos or are tired of switching between applications. The app serves to integrate photos from different social media accounts and computers into one easy-to-access location.

Woven turns a smart device into a virtual photo album by signing into different accounts, downloading photos and then sorting the albums into one vertical list. Users can connect to Facebook, Instagram and other social sites, as well as import photos from a home computer (but you have to create an account with Woven first).

Photos are grouped by the apps they're associated with: Each Facebook album has its own tab, but streams from an iPhone's camera roll or Instagram account are lumped together. Within each album, users can zoom in on individual photos, but there is not yet a way to create an album within Woven itself.

Steve Jungmann, vice president of product at Litl, says the app is targeted for a certain type of user: one who has photos across many devices and apps, is moderately tech savvy, but is mostly looking to tell a story without toting several devices along.

"Woven tackles the age old problem of 'I have too many photos and I don’t know how to organize them," Jungmann says. “This is for people who are comfortable with a mobile device, take photos, and then at a later time want to tell stories with them.”

It was introduced on Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook last December, before expanding to iOS and Android in January. Much like services such as Dropbox, Woven targets the local storage problem, without the high price tag. The app is currently free, and Jungmann would not provide specific details for future monetization.

If you’re an Apple user who uses iCloud, then Woven probably isn’t for you. "The homogeneous environment of Apple is a great solution, but we want to pull in what you leave behind outside of that environment” Jungmann says. If you’re working across an Android, e-reader and a laptop, however, Woven is a simple place for all-in-one access.

Jungmann says that future updates will allow for album sorting, allowing a pop-up feature for photos that haven't been viewed recently and enhanced storytelling capability. For now, Woven is just a photo viewer.

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